Thoughts, Ideas, and Concepts by Sandra Parks

Posts tagged ‘family’

Keyshia Cole was spotted in Cleveland with her boyfriend Cleveland Cavalier Daniel “Boobie” Gibson for a charity event. She was spotted rocking a baby bump and according to sources, she was unmistakably about 7 months pregnant. Keyshia denied pregnancy rumors back in September.

Keyshia and her boyfriend were at Bethany Baptist Church to give out a bag of groceries and turkeys to those less fortunate. Keyshia has been MIA lately and now we see why. Congrats to them, we can’t wait to see what the baby looks like.

Although this has never happen to me I FULLY understand. Tell me what you think of this post.

SAVANNAH, Ga. – An Army cook and single mom may face criminal charges after she skipped her deployment flight to Afghanistan because, she said, no one was available to care for her infant son while she was overseas.

Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, 21, claims she had no choice but to refuse deployment orders because the only family she had to care for her 10-month-old son — her mother — was overwhelmed by the task, already caring for three other relatives with health problems.

Her civilian attorney, Rai Sue Sussman, said Monday that one of Hutchinson’s superiors told her she would have to deploy anyway and place the child in foster care.

“For her it was like, ‘I couldn’t abandon my child,'” Sussman said. “She was really afraid of what would happen, that if she showed up they would send her to Afghanistan anyway and put her son with child protective services.”

Hutchinson, who is from Oakland, Calif., remained confined Monday to the boundaries of Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, 10 days after military police arrested her for skipping her unit’s flight. No charges have been filed, but a spokesman for the Army post said commanders were investigating.

Kevin Larson, a spokesman for Hunter Army Airfield, said he didn’t know what Hutchinson was told by her commanders, but he said the Army would not deploy a single parent who had nobody to care for his or her child.

“I don’t know what transpired and the investigation will get to the bottom of it,” Larson said. “If she would have come to the deployment terminal with her child, there’s no question she would not have been deployed.”

Hutchinson’s son, Kamani, was placed into custody overnight with a daycare provider on the Army post after she was arrested and jailed briefly, Larson said. Hutchinson’s mother picked up the child a week ago and took him back to her home in California.

Hutchinson, who’s assigned to the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, joined the Army in 2007 and had no previous deployments, Sussman said. She said Hutchinson is no longer in a relationship with the father.

The Army requires all single-parent soldiers to submit a care plan for dependent children before they can deploy to a combat zone.

Hutchinson had such a plan — her mother, Angelique Hughes, had agreed to care for the boy. Hughes said Monday she kept the boy for about two weeks in October before deciding she couldn’t keep him for a full year.

Hughes said she’s already having to care for her ailing mother and sister, as well as a daughter with special needs. She also runs a daycare center at her home, keeping about 14 children during the day.

“This is an infant, and they require 24-hour care,” Hughes said. “It was very, very stressful, just too much for me to deal with.”

Hughes said she returned Kamani to his mother in Georgia a few days before her scheduled deployment Nov. 5.

She said they told her daughter’s commanders they needed more time to find another family member or close friend to help Hughes care for the boy, but Hutchinson was ordered to deploy on schedule.

Larson, the Army post spokesman, said officials planned to keep Hutchinson in Georgia as investigators gathered facts about the case.

“Spc. Hutchinson’s deployment is halted,” Larson said. “There will be no deployment while this situation is ongoing.”

CHICAGO – Sarah Palin tells TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey that she doesn’t have her sights set on the 2012 presidency.

“I’m concentrating on 2010 and making sure that we have issues to tackle,” Palin said in the interview taped last week and broadcast on Monday’s “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” “I don’t know what I’m going to be doing in 2012. [Running for president is] not on my radar screen right now.”

Palin spoke to Winfrey as she began rolling out her 413-page memoir, “Going Rogue,” which will be released Tuesday. She begins a book tour Wednesday in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Winfrey opened by asking Palin if she felt snubbed at not getting an invitation to “The Oprah Winfrey Show” last year. Winfrey said she didn’t have any candidates on her Chicago-based show during the campaign because of her support of President Barack Obama.

Palin said she didn’t feel snubbed and told Winfrey, “No offense to you, but it wasn’t the center of my universe.”

The former vice presidential candidate also discussed her experiences on the campaign trail and said she was confident in her abilities when she was asked to run with Sen. John McCain. When chosen, she said, “I felt like, wow, John McCain is a maverick. He’s all about empowering women. He is all about equality. He’s about the everyday working class individual who can succeed in this country and he chose someone who reflects that.”

At the time, she thought that the only skeleton in her closet was the fact that she was received a D in college.

“I thought that was going to be the extent of the controversy,” she said, laughing.

Palin said that she doesn’t blame herself for the Republicans’ election loss. “The reason we lost is because the economy tanked,” she said. “People were sincerely looking for change … Our ticket was perceived as status quo.”

Opening up about familyPalin talked about her family, telling Winfrey that the McCain campaign didn’t let her address the pregnancy of her teenage daughter, Bristol, the way that she wanted.

“This is not to be glamorized,” she said. “This is not to be emulated … I didn’t want that message getting out there that we were giddy happy to become grandparents.”

She added that her daughter called her in tears and was “devastated” and “embarrassed” when her pregnancy became public.

The former Alaska governor was asked about being pregnant with her son Trig, who has Down’s Syndrome. She said that she could understand why a woman would contemplate abortion.

“It was easy to understand why a woman would feel that it’s easier to just do away with some less than ideal circumstance, to do away with the problem,” she said.

But the situation eventually stengthened her pro-life stance. “What I have been given is a gift,” she said.

Levi JohnstonPalin did not respond to the criticism she’s received from Levi Johnston, the father of her grandson, and denied rumors that Johnston and her daughter used to live together. She said it’s “a bit heartbreaking” to see the road that he has taken, saying that it is “not a healthy place to be,” referring to his plan to appear in Playgirl magazine.

“We don’t want to mess up the gig he’s doing: aspiring porn star,” Palin cracked. “I also saw I didn’t go to hockey games. There are so many untruths.”

The new memoir doesn’t contain any references to Johnston, who’s sparred with his former mother-in-law-to-be.

The former Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential candidate told Winfrey that Johnston has been busy with media tours and hasn’t seen his son “for a while.”

Palin said she continues “to hope for the best and to pray for Levi” and that “this can all work out for good.”

The infamous interviewWhen asked about her infamous interview with Katie Couric, Palin said that she was “annoyed” while speaking to Couric and said the way the interview was edited was partially to blame for how she was portrayed.

“I don’t blame people for thinking I was not qualified,” she said. “Her agenda was not neccessarily to show me in the best light.”

She added that the McCain campaign gave her the green light to continue with the multi-part interview, even though she didn’t feel she had done well.

“The campaign said, ‘Right on, good!’ … if they thought it was a good interview, I don’t know what a bad interview was.”

Winfrey ended by asking Palin if she planned to host her own talk show. “Oprah, you are the queen of talk shows,” she responded. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

I can’t seem to stop thinking of my puppy ToTo. He was a 5 year old Terrier mixed with Poodle. He had been in my life since 2004. I miss him so much! I can’t even express or begin to tell you. He meant the world to me. Now some don’t think that puppies have souls but I beg to differ.

ToTo was very much so human. He was such a big light in my life! He always made me smile! ToTo would make you love him. You couldn’t just come into my house and act like he didn’t exist. He was smart too! He knew how to get in the chair at the table and eat with us. OMG he would lay in the bed with you all day. If you didn’t move he wouldn’t move. How could someone kill him?

We live in an evil world now-a-days. I sometimes wish that I could just die because of all the evil. It’s just too much for me to handle. I stay around and encouraged because of my babies to include my three (now two) puppies. I just know that they need me.

I have a 19 year old daughter that even though she is in the Army I know that she still needs me. I have a 17 year old son that is sometimes head strong but I know he still needs me. I also have a 12 year old son that I must stay around for because I know in my heart no one would do right by him right because some think that he is bad. And now I just have two Maltese left.

ToTo will be memorialized this weekend. The Animal Control folks didn’t tell me that I could get his remains cremated so I didn’t have that done. When I called this morning they had already done away with him. SMH!!! I type this blog with tears in my eyes. Oh my I haven’t felt this way since my grand daddy died!!! It’s an undescribable pain. But I feel most comfortable when I’m sleep. When I’m awake I keep seeing his body all over the road behind my house.

And to add to my pain I honestly think that someone in my housing area killed my baby!!!

He was a well diverse puppy. He had been all over the US and he had very great manners!! Everybody loved him. He didn’t meet no strangers. The world has really lost a precious baby, I promise you!!!

At any rate I will post more about my baby later. I will also add some pictures for you all to see. He was a special baby.

My heart is so heavy right now! I guess I should have never gone on that youtube site to look at the teenager being beat in Chicago. Initially I had just heard of it and was reading the media outlets. But after watching it you have to be dead not to feel something. I just don’t know what to say or do.

Anyone that knows me knows that I love the kids. I love working with them and encouraging them. One day while in Atlanta on my way to my sister house we saw three little girls and three little boys going into the bushes at around midnight. I spoke in a loud voice asking LaVerne to stop so that I could tell the little girls not to go into the woods this time of night with those little boys. I knew they were up to no good. But she said no. She said that she wasn’t getting involved. I believe that this was in June. Just recently last week I had a dream that those girls were found dead.

One day I was in the Mall with Reggie and we saw this little boy with is his pants sagging. I asked Reggie to say something to the little boy and he said no. So I was going to say something to him instead and Reggie pulled me away and said Sandra come one and leave people alone.

I have a mentee that is a teenage mom (and so was I) that I work with. One day she told me about her baby daddy hitting on her and I was driving around South Dallas trying to find this kid to speak to him.

These are just a few of the situations I’m sharing with you all now. But there are so many more. Its a sad day when the adults are afraid to chastise the youth today because of fear of them hurting us. I remember when I was coming up my elementary teacher Ms. Hill would pull my ears because I had a big mouth and was always running it. My oh my when I saw her heading towards my desk I knew I was in for that ear to be pulled red. My granny didn’t say a word because she knew Ms. Hill was making sure that I got my lesson. We have moved away from this as a nation. No one wants the teachers to discipline the children although they are at the school 8 hours a day. Then when they get home we so tired or so occupied on facebook and other things that we don’t pay them any attention either. So you have these kids with hours of no chastisement, no structure, no discipline, but yet we expect them to be the next President Obama. Probably not gone happen. Even the bible says that Jesus Chastised those that he loved.

It’s in my heart to help young people. They have so many options today. Do you know that all children of all backgrounds and socio-economic status can attend Harvard?? When I was a child Harvard was not even in my vocabulary. But look at our children today. The sky is the limit. Often times they don’t even know this. That is why the shoot for some dreams. That is way they take the easy way out. So someone must tell them. How come we don’t have more lawyers, doctors, Accountant, Engineers, CEOs, CFOs, COOs? Because we are not showing them how to get into these fields. But we shower them with the latest video games, the latest clothes, we allow them to have all those stupid hair cuts, color in your hair. People we must tighten our shot groups and take our kids back!!! It’s too simple!!!

I believe that our youth are hurting for many reasons. You have some that are from single parent homes, some have been molested by family members that they looked up too, some are intimidated by other kids being placed higher then them, some are jealous over material things, some have learning disabilities that we are overlooking, some are missing their fathers, some have drug habits, some were carried by parents that were doing drugs while they were in the womb. So many other factors come into play. Our babies need help. Some are adults now that never got the help that they needed.

The system is going to put them in jail, what will that solve? Some are going to get the death penalty, what will that solve? Some we will let just wither away, what will that solve? I don’t know what to do and I don’t know all the answers. All my life I’ve been a lover of numbers. But I’m human and I hurt when I see my young people going through. I don’t care what color they are. I’m a soldier and I’m green. I’ve lived all over the world and I love people. I love children. I’m telling you that they need love. And more love and then some more love!!! But they also need discipline, they need structure, we can’t be their friends. That is clearly not working.

What are we going to do? I don’t know so if someone wants to help me please let me know. I can start by offering them The Sandra Parks School of Etiquette. You can find us on line at http://www.sandraparksschoolofetiquette.com or call 972.838.0106